"And he gathered them together into a
place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon [Har
Megiddo]." - Revelation 16:16

KARACHI
- A short sentence in an American magazine has
managed to do what al-Qaeda has not been able to
achieve since September 11, 2001 - inflame large
sections of the Muslim world and reignite passions
between Islam and the Christian West.

A
report in Newsweek that US military interrogators
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated the Koran
- subsequently retracted - initially set off
protests in Afghanistan in which at least 15
people were killed. These protests have escalated
and are expected to come to
a head on May 27, when Islamic movements in 25
countries, notably Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, will launch mass
gatherings.

A largely disjointed al-Qaeda
could not have wished for better, as its
underlying ideology is to stoke the fires of a
civilizational battle leading to Armageddon -
which the Bible sees as the final battle between
the forces of good and evil, prophesied to occur
at the end of the world when Christ will return to
smite his enemies, led by the Antichrist. The same
battle is predicted in the Islamic faith.

Newsweek's retraction comes after much of
the damage has already been done, and is anyway
perceived as having been made under US pressure.
Further, leaders of Muslim groups now say that
they have proof from other sources that such
incidents did occur.

Pakistan's News
International published a story in its May 17
issue based on an interview with a detainee at
Lahore's Adyala prison. The man had recently been
released from Guantanamo Bay and was being held
pending final clearance. He claimed that he had
personally witnessed several incidents of
desecration of the Koran by US soldiers in
Guantanamo.

Outrage in Afghanistan
The initial spontaneous reaction in
Afghanistan against the report on the desecration
of the Koran has now turned into an organized
anti-US movement. Together with rising Taliban
resistance activity in the east and southeastern
border areas, a political movement against the
presence of US-led troops in the country is
gathering pace.

Soon after demonstrations
started in Jalalabad and spread to Kabul, the
Islamist but anti-Taliban faction of the Northern
Alliance was activated near Mazar-i-Sharif in the
north, where former Afghan president Professor
Burhanuddin Rabbani held a meeting with
representatives of four other groups, including
the Ittahad-i-Islami, Afghanistan and members of a
group from neighboring Uzbekistan. According to
Asia Times Online contacts, the groups agreed to
fuel anti-US demonstrations and turn them into a
national movement against the US presence in the
country.

There was a swift reaction in
ethnic Tajik-dominated Badakshan, where 300
clerics issued a religious ruling against the US,
and across the country mosques echoed with anti-US
rhetoric, from Kandahar to the Panjshir Valley
during last Friday's sermons. US forces arrested a
few clerics, but this only added salt to the
wounds.

Political upheavals in the Central
Asian republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan
could open the way in these countries for
increased civil liberties and a voice for
once-repressed forces in the country, especially
Islamic ones. Similarly, the crackdown in
Uzbekistan could have the same effect by
heightening the voices of opposition.

Whether they be the forces of Akramia,
Hizbut Tehrir or the traditional Central Asian
brand of the Sufi school of Naqhbania, they are
all staunchly pro-Islamic. And given geographical
and cultural ties, this renewed Islamic fervor
could easily spread to the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek
regions of Afghanistan, where Islamic movements
have been weakening over the past 10 years due to
the Pashtun Taliban rule in Kabul. The ethnic
Pashtun belt of Afghanistan and Pakistan is
already under heavy Taliban influence.

Al-Qaeda's visionIn a recent
interview with the Financial Times of London,
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf
claimed that al-Qaeda was now a destroyed entity.
However, the reality is different. The destruction
of al-Qaeda, or its survival, is beside the point.
Al-Qaeda's success will be judged by its ability
to have brought about not only a politically
motivated anti-US backlash among Muslims across
the world, but at the same time to create the
grounds for its recognition among Muslim
academics.

Ideologically speaking, at the
time of September 11, it was impossible for any
Muslim academic to praise al-Qaeda or justify its
modus operandi in the context of Islamic
teachings. However, over the past three-and-a-half
years, much has changed. The US has disbanded
several Muslim world-wide charity organizations;
put pressure on countries such as Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan and Kuwait to change their social
dynamics; attacked Afghanistan and Iraq; rolled
back Pakistan's nuclear program; and laid siege to
Iran.

In this atmosphere, Muslim academics
in countries as diverse as Yemen, Malaysia and
Morocco, and many others, have approved of
al-Qaeda at a minimum as Muqadamul Jaish - a
front-line force whose existence is a guarantee
for the survival of all other forces behind it.
The concept of Muqadamul Jaish gained prominence
toward the end of the Saddam Hussein regime in
Iraq, and has gathered increasing acceptance
since.

'The end is nigh ...'
The Muslim media from Egypt to Pakistan
consistently paint al-Qaeda, the US-led "war on
terror", the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and
events such as those in Uzbekistan in the
perspective of the "End of Time" and Har Megiddo.

In Islam, before the return of Jesus
(Isa), the Mehdi (restorer of the faith), will
appear at the end of time to restore justice on
earth and establish universal Islam. The Mehdi
will be preceded by al-Dajjal, a Muslim anti-god,
who will be defeated and will try to flee from the
valley of Har Megiddo, which is in the Jezreel
valley, in the north of Israel. Due to its
strategic location, it has seen many battles. In
1918, there was a decisive battle between the
British and the Ottomans, and General Alenby won
the title "Lord of Megiddo". The same area now
serves as an Israeli airbase.

In Muslim
legend, "Khorasan" is from where an army will
emerge to support Muslims in the Middle East.
Their battle will end with victory in Palestine
and the revival of Khilafah (caliphate).
For the past few decades, Muslim academics have
described Khorasan as the Central Asian states,
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"End of Time"
programs are sold in CDs and DVDs across the
Muslim world, which romanticize the Taliban,
al-Qaeda and Hizbut Tehrir and add to their
popularity.

Al-Qaeda is working to turn
the story of Megiddo and the End of Time into
reality. And the president of the United States,
George W Bush, believes Armageddon is at hand:
"The evil one is among us," he said in 2002, in a
clear reference to the Antichrist. To quote
Michael Ortiz Hill, "[T]he Commander in Chief of
the most powerful military force in human history
has located American foreign policy within a
Biblical narrative that leads inexorably towards
the plains of Megiddo ..."